Culture and Religion

Racist violence in Western Europe not driven by fear of unemployment

PERSBERICHT, 1 October 2015 - In Western Europe racist violence appears to be mainly determined by the size of the immigrant population in a certain region rather than by levels of welfare or unemployment.

That is one
of the conclusions reached by John van Kesteren of INTERVICT, the International
Victimology Institute Tilburg. Van Kesteren will defend his PhD research on
Friday October 2nd at Tilburg University.

John van Kesteren analyzed data of the International Crime Victim
Survey, a vast long-term research project by Tilburg University concerning crime
and attitudes toward crime in 84 countries. Van Kesteren looked into the role
of gun possession in relation to violent crime, attitudes toward punishment, and
racially motivated crimes, in other words: hate crimes.

Xenophobia and
cultural diversity

A remarkable finding of the research is that the amount of
hate crimes in Western-Europe is related to the number of immigrants living in
a certain region regardless of welfare or unemployment levels. The common assumption
that hate crimes are motivated by economic seems therefore unfounded. Instead, xenophobia
seems to be mainly related to cultural diversity.

Urban
nightlife

Furthermore the data show that young immigrants are most
vulnerable to racially motivated crime. Other important factors are however living
in a big city, a low income and an active nightlife, which is the same victim
profile as that of other violent crimes.

Strikingly, Van Kesteren found that the indigenous population
also falls victim to hate crimes[1]. Seven per
cent of the respondents were immigrants and they counted for a quarter of all hate
crimes. This means that 75% of the victims of hate crimes belong to the
indigenous population.

Western Europe
different

In contrast to Western Europe, regions with a lager immigrant
population in de United States and Australia do not show more racist violence. In
Western Europe tensions between first or second generation immigrants and the
indigenous population appears to be stronger.

Other findings

Van Kesteren further
discovered that victims of a break-in are not necessarily of the opinion that
the perpetrators should be punished more heavily. In addition, gun owners run
more risk of becoming a victim to violent crime than people who don’t own a gun.

[1] 30.000 people in 15 Western European countries were asked: ‘In the past 5 years, did you, or any member of your
immediate family fell victim of a crime because, or partly because of your nationality, race or color, religious belief or
sexual orientation?’

Note for editors

John van Kesteren will defend his PhD thesis on Friday
October 2nd, 2015 at 10 a.m. in the Auditorium of Tilburg University. Title thesis:
Criminal victimization at individual and
international level. Results from the International Crime Victim Surveys. Supervisors:
Prof. J.M. Van Dijk; Prof. A. Pemberton. For more information please contact
John van Kesteren at j.vankesteren@tilburguniversity.eduor tel. +31 13 13 466 2993 (press office).